The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945

[End Page 1089] Pre-1940: Mažeikiai (Yiddish: Mazheik), town, apskritis center, Lithuania; 1940–1941: Mažeikiai/Mazheikiai, uezd center, Lithuanian SSR; 1941–1944: Moscheiken, Kreis center, Gebiet Schaulen-Land, Generalkommissariat Litauen; post-1991: Mažeikiai, rajonas center, Telšiai apskritis, Republic of Lithuania

Mažeikiai is located 74 kilometers (46 miles) northwest of Šiauliai. According to the 1923 census, there were 771 Jews living in the town. As of 1941, there were around 1,000 Jews residing in Mažeikiai.

German armed forces occupied the town on June 25, 1941. At the start of July 1941, Lithuanian nationalists, headed by a certain Payulis, a former captain in the Lithuanian army, and his deputy Juozas Smauskas, ordered all the Jews to gather in the Bet Midrash. The dentist Dr. Fanya Lampe refused to leave her home, so the Lithuanians killed her and her child. A few days later, the Jews were moved from the Bet Midrash and resettled into a granary. There, Jewish men, over the age of 15, were separated from the women and children. The men remained in the building, while the women and children were resettled to the Psherkshkniai estate, near the village of Tirkšliai. In effect, two ghettos were set up in Mažeikiai, one for the men in the granary and one for the women and children on the Psherkshkniai estate, where the Jewish women and children from Tirkšliai were already concentrated. Able-bodied men were exploited for labor of various kinds in Mažeikiai and its surroundings. The intensive physical labor included loading and unloading trains at the railway station.

On August 3, 1941, all the Jewish men were taken out of the granary and shot near the Jewish cemetery. On August 5, the women and children were resettled into the granary. On August 9, the women and children were also shot near the Jewish cemetery. Along with the Jewish women and children from Mažeikiai, Jews from at least 10 other localities—Akmenė, Seda, Viekšniai, Tirkšliai, Židikai, Pikeliai, Klykoliai, Leckava, Laižuva, and Vegeriai—were also murdered. The total number of victims was around 3,000, buried in at least five separate mass graves. The killings were carried out by the Lithuanian police, under the supervision of the Germans, most likely a detachment of Einsatzkommando 2 from Šiauliai. About 30 non-Jewish Soviet activists, who had been held in the Mažeikiai jail, were also shot along with the Jews. The Lithuanian participants in the shootings were rewarded with Jewish clothing collected at the killing site. After the Aktion, the Lithuanian policemen celebrated their ill-gotten gains with a large meal accompanied by alcohol in Mažeikiai.